


Ruins of Sharganam

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 20:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7546937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tiny bit of h/c fluff before the two rejoin the crew of the Lost Light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruins of Sharganam

It was good to get off the ship every once in a while, Drift thought. The mini cruiser had had plenty of space when it was just him--all he’d needed was a place to recharge, a meditation cushion, and some rations. But now, with Ratchet it got a little, uh, close.  Because it wasn’t just another (rather crabby) body, and it wasn’t just the need for more rations (with actual flavors, because apparently medics are snobs about supplements and scrap like that). It was all the….stuff Ratchet brought with him, both visible (all those medic tools) and invisible (a few million years of baggage).  

“Come on,” Drift said, tugging at Ratchet’s hand.  “It’ll be fun.” And fun was something they desperately needed, with that whole rock-creature debacle still ringing in their minds and clogging up their air filters.  

“I don’t do fun,” Ratchet said, sourly.  “And in general, your definition of ‘fun’ involves things most mechs would call ‘reckless endangerment’.” 

Well.  Okay. Fair point.  But Drift had a mission here, now, and that was to inject some fun into the medic. It had been ages--in fact, Drift wasn't even sure he could remember it--since he'd last seen the other mech smile. New plan. “It’s also….educational?”  See if Ratchet could refuse THAT lure.  Drift thought not!  

“Educational.”  The flat mouthplates and voice hinted at a high level of dubiousness.  

“Really!” Drift pulled up the screen on the datapad. “See? From the planetary tourist bureau.”  He started to recite it. “Come see the legendary Ruins of Sharganam, the system’s oldest civ--” 

“I can read,” Ratchet said, testily, swiping the datapad from Drift’s hand.  “Hnff. Suppose it’s better than just sitting around waiting for the system to reboot.” Which was why they were on this planet in the first place. Fraggin’ ion storm. He sighed.  “Let’s go.”  

*** 

Drift just about bounced the entire way out there, darting ahead, and then back, to gush about whatever new rock formation or turn in the road that was coming, as Ratchet followed.  Everything seemed like an effort, these days. Ratchet had run enough diagnostics on himself to know--mentally--that there was nothing physically wrong with him. Even after Pharma’s little experiment in vivisection, he was fine. Fine! Every scan said so. 

Maybe he was just getting old. Parts reached exhaustion points: metal fatigued, circuits wore out, batteries lost charge. Maybe sparks, too, could do that.  Primus knew he’d put his through enough.  Too many patients he hadn’t been able to save, too many mechs he’d repaired and repaired and repaired from wounds so horrific they hadn’t even been thought of in his training days.  Too many days spent trying to invent new techniques to heal the body, while the minds inside, well, he couldn’t touch those.  It was too much and it felt like a weight over his eyes sometimes.  

Drift was babbling, running back one more time. “It’s, I guess, I don’t know.  All this open space! I’ve spent so much of my life in ships, or underground, or fighting.” He looked around at the pale green sky silhouetting the buff colored stone.  “It’s so peaceful….”

“Except for you and,” Ratchet waved a hand, “all that talking.”  

Drift did not seem rebuked, even the least. “Well, yeah, but I was on my ship, all alone, for so long. Kind of missed having someone to talk to.” His voice faltered a little at the end, his face falling into those lines of sadness that thudded at Ratchet’s spark.  

“Talk _at_ ,” Ratchet said, gruffly, before relenting to the twinge on his spark. “So where are these famous ruins?” 

Fortunately (or not) Drift was an engine of perkiness that could rev himself right back up. “Just over the hill; come on!”  Ratchet allowed himself to be tugged up over the next rise, where the ruins of what he guessed was this Sharganam place lay. 

It was...pretty ruinous.  But even so, there was something in the sweeping arcs and intersecting lines of the pavements and half-standing buildings that caught the optics, drawing them in. A light breeze popped up, as though held swirling in the little valley like a bowl. Some buildings had half-survived, casting early morning soft-edged shadows along the pavements as they walked. Well, Ratchet walked: Drift darted from one of those informational placards to another; and it struck Ratchet how much Drift still must feel it--his own ignorance, lack of education, some void he thought he’d never make up for. 

Drift came to a halt before one building, with a huge, circular window of prisming glass, somehow still intact. It was angled to catch the morning light, the window, and it spilled across the floor in waves of color that seemed to shimmer and shift in the breeze, and as Ratchet got closer, he could see that the window wasn’t solid--each piece was set on a differently-angled axis, so each crystal rotated freely, casting its split-spectrum of light in a continual dance. 

“Pretty,” he admitted, grudgingly.  See, he could do the sightseeing thing.  When he wanted to. Fun, not so much, but he could admit to something being pretty. It was a step.  

“Read the little sign thing,” Drift said, his voice hushed like he was barely daring to breathe.  

Ratchet knew Drift would probably prod him till he did, or worse yet, read it to him, so he crossed over to the sign, mouth flat as he read. ‘Whoever stands in the morning light of the mystical healing window will be healed of all ills.’ Riiiiiiiiiight. Ratchet would take a mediscanner any day, over some woo-woo colored light show.  But woo-woo was right up Drift’s alley, and even as Ratchet turned to look, Drift was scooting over, gesturing for him to come next to him.  

“It’s just refracted light,” Ratchet said. And autosuggestion, if anything, some flimflam placebo, where you think it’s going to work, so it works.  Not on him. Not on anyone sane. 

“It’s sacred geometry, too,” Drift insisted. Not quite arguing, but almost. “If it’s just light, then it’s not like standing here for a few minutes is going to do anything bad, right?” 

Ratchet had no answer to that.  It was just colored light in pretty patterns, and he supposed there was no harm in looking at them for a few moments, and it would make Drift happy and, really, that was worth a few minutes of standing and looking a bit like an idiot.  Besides, the walk had tired him out more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.  

So he shifted his shoulder panels back and settled in next to the other mech, watching the colored light play and dazzle. The breeze seemed to pick up, and the crystal prisms spun faster, casting rainbows in crisscrossing intricate arcs over the floor and their bodies. 

It was just colored light, but still, Ratchet could feel something like a tingling fuzz around his spark, something shifting inside him, like a layers-old crust of age and decay crackling and flaking off. His spark seemed to warm, but a different kind of heat than Ratchet could explain, something pulsing and alive.  The weight of the war seemed to lighten, like a load lifted from his shoulder struts, or maybe he just felt stronger somehow.  He could still feel the regrets he’d had, the doubts, but he could also feel a kind of pride, that he had survived, and he had helped others survive, as best he could and maybe, maybe, that was enough. He had fought his own war, in his own way. Even in peacetime, a medic fights a war against death, and maybe the fighting mattered more than winning.  

Ratchet closed his optics, but he swore he could still feel the swirl of lights playing over his armor and it felt like dawn. He thought of how, even before the war, he’d followed his conscience, not content to keep the official clinic and official hours for only those who could afford to pay.  It had felt like something sacred, then, to heal mechs, to repair broken struts, fix leaking hoses, even if they didn’t pay, even if they didn’t even say thank you. Because it mattered, because it was a chance for them to have a better life than before, and maybe they’d take it, and maybe they wouldn’t, but it was a choice and a chance they wouldn’t have even had without him.  

Healing hadn’t felt like that--sacred--in a long time.  But maybe it could be, again.  

“Hey look,” Drift’s voice was a whisper, but even so had a hint of teasing in it. “You’re smiling.”  

And before Ratchet could school his face to a more, uh, medically stern one, and before he could retort that he was a free mech and thus allowed to smile whenever he wanted, thankyouverymuch, Drift had sealed the smile on his lipplates with a kiss, rising up on his toe-plates, one hand gently resting on Ratchet’s arm for balance, as the lights continued to swirl over them.  

The kiss ended, eventually, and it seemed like the smile had transferred to Drift’s face as he pulled away, his optics sparkling in a way that seemed to stir something in Ratchet’s spark.  

“Well,” Ratchet coughed into the sudden silence, thick with emotion, his spark feeling new and clean and lighter than he’d ever remembered. “That was, erm....educational.” 


End file.
